1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is generally related to near field communications (NFC). More particularly, the present invention is related to a voice interface to NFC applications.
2. Description
Near-Field Communications (NFC) is a very short-range contactless data transfer technology related to RFID (Radio Frequency Identification). NFC has achieved commercial success in Europe and Japan for public transit payment systems and for point-of-sale purchases using cell phones with built-in NFC interfaces.
Another NFC application that has been proposed and deployed to a limited extent is to store URIs (Universal Resource Identifiers) in NFC tags attached to Smart Posters. Users with NFC-equipped cell phones can scan the NFC tag on a Smart Poster to automatically call up web content associated with the poster on their cell phones. This eliminates the need to manually enter a URI on a device with a limited keypad. However, Smart Poster scenarios typically presume that the user intends to immediately use the URI. What is not considered is the problem of retrieving or managing multiple such URIs on the portable device.
Speech recognition is another possible technology that could be used for entering web addresses on limited user interface devices. However, considering how awkward it is to verbally communicate most URIs to another person, it is clear that speech recognition technology will have to become very sophisticated before it can be used for this purpose. Accurate speech recognition requires a large number of MIPS (million instructions per second), which is problematic for low power portable devices. Furthermore, even if the recognition engine worked perfectly, insurmountable usability obstacles surround the problem of verbally entering typical URIs such as, for example, http://www!ncbi!nlm!nih!gov/entrez/query!fcqi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9962543&dopt=Abstract. (It should be noted that periods have been replaced with exclamation marks in the above referenced URI to avoid inadvertent hyperlinks.)
Thus, what is needed is a technique for combining speech recognition with NFC to enable a user to enter and use web addresses on portable devices.